^ You will all recollect that some time ago there was a scandal and a great outcry about certain cutlasses and bayonets which had been supplied to our troops and sailors. These war- like implements were polished as bright as rubbing could make them ; they were very well sharpened ; they looked lovely. But when they were applied to the test of the work of war they broke and they bent and proved more likely to hurt the hand of him that used them than to do any harm to the enemy. Let me apply that analogy to the effect of education, which is a sharpen- ing and polishing of the mind. You may develop the intellectual side of people as far as you like, and you may confer upon them all the skill that training and instruction can give ; but, if there is not underneath all that outside form and superficial polish, the firm fibre of healthy manhood and earnest desire to do well, your labour is absolutely in vain.^
(4) The child has a soul. The soul is also the creature of habit. The soul learns its habits even as the body and the mind acquire theirs, by use and practice. The habit of living without God is one which may be learned by the child. It is one of the easiest of all habits to acquire. Unlike some other habits, it demands no exertion and no self-denial. But there is another, an opposite, habit of the soul, that of living to God, with God, and in
* S. P. Cad man, Cliarles Darwin and Other English Thinkers, 94. » T. H. Huxley, Collected Essays, iii. 445.
PROVERBS XXII. 6 317
God. That too is a habit, not formed so soon or so easily as the other, yet hke it formed by a succession of acts, each easier than the last, and each making the next easier still.
^ He that has made a leap to-day can more easily make the same leap to-morrow ; and he will make a longer or higher leap soon, perhaps the day after. His muscles are stretched, and are also strengthened. This we call practice. From it comes a certain state of the body. So from practice in good or evil comes a certain state of the mind. This is called habit : and it tends to the doing again with more ease what we have already done with less. The thought of that mighty engine ! never slumbering, ever working : self-feeding, self-acting : powerful and awful servant of God who ordained it: powerful and restless, too, alike for the destruction and for the salvation of souls. What we do without habit we do because it pleases at the time. But what we do by habit we do even though it pleases little or not at all at the time. Place habit, then, on the side of religion. You cannot depend upon your tastes and feelings towards Divine things to be uniform : lay hold upon an instrument which will carry you over their inequalities, and keep you in the honest practice of your spiritual exercises, when but for this they would have been intermitted.^
2. The child ought to be trained for national reasons. The true riches of a country lie in its manhood, and the child is manhood in the germ. The promise of the future is in our children. We hear that to keep up an army and navy, to prosecute wars here and there, is necessary to open and keep open markets, and push trade. We are told that trade follows the flag, and that the Union Jack is a commercial asset. There is a more valuable commercial asset that we are in danger of ignoring — the child.
^ There is a story told of a procession in an ancient city. The old veterans, whose days were drawing to a close, but who had spent years in the service of their nation, walked first. They were led by a man bearing aloft the motto, "We have been brave." They were followed by those in active service, the manhood of the people, who bore the motto, "We are brave." The rear was brought up by the youths and lads, who bore aloft this inscription, " We will be brave." ^
^ Letters on Church and Religion of William Ewart Gladstone, ii. 419. « J. W. Clayton, TJie Genius of God, 55.
3i8 THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN
III.
The Education of the Child.
For the word here, chanok, translated " train up," there are two root meanings, the one " to make narrow," the other " to put into the mouth for taste and nutrition." Instruction compre- hends both conceptions : (1) making narrow, i.e., restraint of all wayward courses, repression of selfish desires and unruly passions ; (2) the imparting of sound intellectual nourishment with a view to the growth and vigour of man's higher life.
1. Let us consider first of all the idea of restraint — the negative side of this question of education. We know that weak and sentimental nature which shrinks from inflicting pain under any circumstances. Seizing on the ill-understood doctrine that love is the sovereign power in life and in education, it pleads in the name of love that the offender may be spared, that he may escape the due penalty of his fault. That is not a love like God's love.